


Cold Comfort

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Series: The MCU Dæmon AU [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 16:11:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1824418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frigga’s comfort falls woefully short in every universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

It’s too hot. The Allfather’s room is kept at a sweltering temperature while he sleeps, and away from the influence of the Casket, Eisa feels sick with it. Her skin is back to being three sizes too small, choking her, but she’s reluctant to shuck her form, even to breathe. She was ice in this shape, bright and sharp as a Jotunheim blade, and she’s ashamed of how much she wants that back. Loki’s fear and disgust burns like bile at the back of her throat, but his fingers are curled tight into her ruff as if to hold her there. Mixed signals. She doesn’t know what to do.

“How long will it last?” Loki asks, casting a dispassionate eye over the Allfather. Eisa is almost convinced by his performance, were it not for the tremble in his fingers as he speaks. They cannot feel nothing for Odin, whatever he has done.

“I don’t know,” Frigga says. “This time it’s different. We were unprepared.”

Eisa, in a brief fit of black humour, wonders if Odin was so unprepared for their discovery of their heritage that it brought on the Odinsleep, and smothers the urge to giggle. She wouldn’t put such a thing past Gangleri, currently propped up between Huginn and Muninn as she slept on her perch.

Frigga’s Hlín lies curled on the bed covers, watching them intently. Only hours ago, Eisa would have given anything to come fleeing to him, small enough to huddle between his paws and let the rumble of his purr drown out her fears. Now… now she feels his golden eyes burn where they fix on her, and the feeling it elicits is just like when she carried Gangleri from the Vault in her mouth, and her jaws itched with the desire to bite down until the Dust spilt between her teeth.

“I asked him to be honest with you from the beginning,” Frigga says. The bed is a cavernous distance between them.

‘Why did you lie?’ is what Eisa wants to ask. No matter what Odin and Gangleri thought, what they did. The sum of their crimes could not be counted yet. Frigga and Hlín knew. They always knew. It is only an accident that it has come to light. How long would they have kept that knowledge between them?

“Why did he lie?” is what Loki asks instead.

“He kept the truth from you so you would never feel different,” Hlín says, padding up the bed to sit beneath Frigga’s hand.

The day is clearly a day for humour, as Eisa has the sudden urge to laugh again, a high frantic bark lodging in her throat. Loki’s grip on her tightens until it hurts as the same convulsion chokes him.

They’ve been this way for centuries, the Silvertongue and his quicksilver daemon, the everchild that will not settle, cannot even keep a name for too long. Gossip has been their shadow since the cusp of adulthood, vicious rumours and epithets that spoke nothing of honour and everything of malice and flaw.

And that was what it was to never feel different?

Would they ever fit anywhere?

“You are our son, Loki, and we your family,” Frigga says, earnest and sorrowful, and so far away on the other side of Odin’s sleeping form. “You must know that.”

Golden Hlín says nothing, but watches; always watches. He reminds Eisa of Heimdall. It is not a comforting comparison.

She breaks his gaze and lifts her head to look at Loki instead, who does not meet her eyes.  _Do we know that?_  They wonder separately, and a shiver passes through both of them despite the oppressive heat of Odin’s chamber.

“Do you find this room warm?” Eisa asks, abrupt enough to surprise even Loki.

Frigga and Hlín blink in tandem and do not reply. What little Eisa can read of their faces reeks of confusion, like grasping for threads in the dark and trying to determine which is blue.

Eisa thinks of her frosted fur, the way her icy paws clicked against the Vault floor, and how melting back into an aesir shape felt like dying by inches. She breathes in, and the sticky, humid air is as heavy as it always is, except for that moment in the Vault when she breathed pure winter.

_They knew why we had to fight to breathe. They knew why we burned with fever when we tried to be like them._

“We mustn’t lose hope that your father will return to us, and your brother,” Frigga says without responding to Eisa’s question, and that is all the answer she needs. She feels Loki sit back, his fingers loosening in her fur, and knows he has decided the same.

_They are not ours. They never were._

“What hope is there?”

_For any of us._


End file.
